For the past seven years we here at Take Back the Sky have been focusing our efforts to get a real-life manned spaceship named Serenity on SpaceX and its founder and CEO, Elon Musk. If you want to understand why we chose SpaceX and not Virgin Galactic, Boeing, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, or any other private company that’s in the business of building and launching spaceships, you need look no further than the upcoming Starlink-1 mission. While SpaceX has been in the business of making history (and making spaceflight sexy again) for some time now, this latest mission has several features that just exude the daring, independent spirit that we Browncoats value so highly.

Starlink-1 Mission Patch (courtesy SpaceX Now)

First of all, the mission’s very purpose is something any Browncoat would admire. With Starlink, SpaceX hopes to establish a mega-constellation of 12,000 satellites that will provide high-speed internet across the entire planet. The endeavor will cost Elon Musk and company roughly $10 billion, and it is expected to take approximately 10 years. When it’s finished, however, anyone will be able to have high-speed internet access anywhere on the globe, and the best connections will no longer be reserved for those who are in the most populated areas or have the finances to afford the equipment necessary to establish a good connection out on the raggedy edge. SpaceX plans to have half the constellation in orbit by 2024, with the full constellation out in the black by 2028.

The Starlink-1 launch, which is planned NET 10:30PM EDT on May 15 (02:30 GMT May 16) from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, will be the sixth SpaceX launch of 2019 and the fifth for a Falcon 9. It will also be the 70th Falcon 9 launch since 2010. Its payload will be no less than 60 satellites that will be inserted into Low Earth Orbit. SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell has stated publicly that this first batch of 60 satellites will drive the schedule for the next set of spacecraft to be launched, depending on how successful they are.

There’s more to the Browncoat nature of this mission than its everyman payload, however. The logistics of the mission also reflect the attitude of a company that aims to misbehave. Not only will the mission utilize a previously-flown Falcon 9 first stage, but for the first time, the satellites will also be launched within a previously-flown payload fairing. The Falcon 9 first stage being used is core B1049, which was previously utilized for the Iridium-8 mission in January 2019 as well as the Telstar 18V mission in September 2018. (It will be recovered yet again aboard SpaceX’s Atlantic droneship Of Course I Still Love You during this mission.) The payload fairing for the mission is expected to be the one that SpaceX successfully recovered from the Atlantic Ocean following the most recent Falcon Heavy mission.

The first SpaceX launch of the New Year is scheduled to take place (NET) Friday, January 11 at 10:31 AM EST (15:31 UTC). SpaceX completed the static fire for the Iridium-8 mission at Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg AFB in California on January 6, and will launch 10 satellites of the Iridium NEXT constellation aboard a Falcon 9 from the same pad this weekend.

(image courtesy AmericaSpace)

The relationship between SpaceX and Iridium traces back to 2010, when Iridium contracted Elon Musk’s private space company to launch its entire NEXT satellite constellation shortly after the very first successful flight of a Falcon 9. It would be seven years before SpaceX would be able to start fulfilling that contract, but since the first of seven previous Iridium NEXT missions was completed in 2017, SpaceX has been able to launch and deploy each subsequent group of satellites every few months with little interruption. This month’s launch will be the eighth and final launch of the Iridium NEXT constellation of satellites, and upon its completion, SpaceX will have launched a total of 75 satellites for Iridium in just two years.

The Falcon 9 for this mission will be a previously-flown booster that was launched and recovered in September of 2018 during the Telstar 18V mission. This final group of ten Iridium NEXT satellites will be inserted into a Low Polar Orbit, and the first stage of the Falcon 9 will land once again, this time at sea aboard SpaceX’s Pacific drone barge Just Read the Instructions.

Those who wish to watch this milestone mission can tune into SpaceX’s live webcast at spacex.com and on the company’s YouTube channel. Coverage will begin approximately 20 minutes before liftoff.